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Hopeville Incident
, the 1st Intelligence Battalion field commander during the Incident, and Yoshika Agata, the BRUTUS agent responsible for the Incident.]] The Hopeville Incident was an incident orchestrated by the in . In , with the looking increasingly bleak, the Office began looking at possibilities of having humanity move to planets that had survived the onslaught. However, many of the colonies on the list were under the control of governments, and taking the planet by military force was deemed unrealistic in the situation that would lead humanity to resettle. ONI, desiring the most effective method of the clearing the planets of resistance to the settling on it, ordered BRUTUS agent Yoshika Agata to engineer a virus that would quickly and effectively eliminate the a planet's population, which was to be tested on the colony of . In October of 2552, Agata released an early version of the virus in the settlement of Hopeville, just outside the borders of the Free State, to test its effects. Within 24 hours, the was awash with reports from Hopeville of the disease. Paranoid of the possibility of the disease spreading to the Free State, the GFS declared a zone of quarantine and mobilized all local units of the Free Army to contain the outbreak. Within 24 hours of the quarantine, all those infected had died from the disease. In the aftermath of the incident, rumors quickly spread that the incident was ONI's doing among the population. In order to allay fears and keep the population from panicking, the Free State publicly released false reports that the disease was in reality a rare planet-specific disease that all Free State citizens had been vaccinated against. While conspiracy theorists still claimed it was ONI, most of the population breathed a sigh of relief and continued on with their daily lives. Privately, the 1st Intelligence Battalion was ordered to discover and neutralize whoever was responsible for the outbreak. With few, if any, leads, the GFS enlisted the aid of several specialists from the Victorian Independent State, including Major Nathaniel Wright, a VIS intelligence officer who was placed in charge of the field operations. Over the next several weeks, they eventually found the perpetrator of the outbreak, BRUTUS field agent Yoshika Agata, in the lawless regions. Capturing her, Wright and his agents tortured her extensively until she revealed the location of her operation, and the fact that she was indeed ONI. Immediately afterward, her execution was authorized and carried out. While the Incident was still a point of contention for some time after its occurrence, most of the public accepted the government's explanation, and the operations afterward remained secret. History Conception Implementation Response inspecting one of the infected from Hopeville during the initial response]] Once initial reports of the disease began to spread to the Gilgamesh Free State through word of mouth and the , the Gilgamesh Free Armed Forces were immediately mobilized, with the long-unused standard Hydra protocols instituted. Lacking up-to-date equipment to move in and begin cleansing the area, the Army instituted a 50 kilometer exclusion zone, and the Gilgamesh Free Air Force prepared to fly sorties to destroy Hopeville with incendiary weapons. At the same time, Colonel Kevin Mathurin was recalled from the New Belgrade Medical Institute alongside a team of doctors. Setting up a small clinic within the exclusion zone, they ventured into Hopeville to find what survivors they could, attempt to treat them, and perform autopsies on the dead for 48 hours, at which point they were to evacuate as the Air Force began its sorties. As they attempted to treat those infected with this unknown disease, the doctors sent back their notes and findings to the New Belgrade Medical Institute where they were reviewed by the chief virologist, Doctor Samuel Watkins. After 36 hours, Watkins and other scientists at the Institute had deemed the disease was similar in structure and symptoms to Bushpox, a disease similar to Smallpox that had been found on Gilgamesh during the initial colonization period but had been wiped out for the most part within a matter of years. However, this disease was different, its progression and symptoms much more potent, with a 99.9% fatality rate, and those few who survived were blinded or left extremely weak. With their findings confirmed, Mathurin and the others sterilized their clinic and were themselves decontaminated before being moved to cautionary quarantine in case they too had been affected by the disease. Although it was prior to the 48 hour deadline, with Mathurin and others having been evacuated, Strategic Air Command was ordered to launch. Scrambling, within an hour the area had been sterilized from the air via incendiary bombs. Operation: BIG IRON With the public calmed by the Free State's explanation of the outbreak, the 1st Intelligence Battalion was tasked with tracking down and neutralizing the threat that had released the virus before it could release it within the Free State. In order to expedite the tracking and and elimination of the threat, the Battalion requested and received Victorian Independent State intelligence officer Major Nathaniel Wright due to his extensive experience in tracking and interrogation of agents. Leading a detachment of fifteen agents, Wright had them move through the area around Hopeville, disguised as refugees or members of criminal syndicates, searching for anyone new that had been spotted moving towards the settlement shortly before the outbreak, or anyone that had come down with symptoms before a trip to the town. Over the next week, the rebels found that only one person local settlers didn't recognize had come through their settlements with Hopeville as their destination: a short and shy Asian woman who had a accent. While it was unknown where she came from on-planet, most settlers stated that if they were looking for her, they would likely find her in the city of Avarin, deep within the lawless regions, simply due to the fact she would stand out if she stayed in a smaller settlement. With almost no other leads, the rebels made their way to Avarin, and set themselves up in teams of five in several safehouses around the city, focusing on the more trafficked areas that their target would have to visit at some point, and where they would be able to capture her in the crowds. With currency being near-worthless in the city, the rebels bartered for their housing and food with drugs and other illicit products sourced from the Gilgamesh Free State Auxiliaries. Observing for the next ten days, the rebels realized that their target was erratic, having a strict schedule for several days, then switching to another, something Wright had not expected. As a result, they planned to instead grab her at the first chance they got to avoid the possibility of her catching onto them and leaving the city altogether, or knowing to avoid certain people. Finally, on New Year's Eve, several rebels tailed Agata through the city, which was awash with revelers, and grabbed her, immediately bringing her back to Wright for interrogation. Over the next two days, Agata was held in solitary confinement, with occasional visits by Wright in order in an attempt to get her to collaborate with the rebels, a gesture that was met with no success whatsoever. The next two weeks became a constant stream of torture for Agata as Wright and the other rebel agents took turns interrogating, attempting to ensure she would not be able to sleep, utilizing drugs to artificially keep her awake when her body began to force her to rest. Despite the desire for some of the Gilgameshans to physically torture her, Wright forbade any interrogation of the such, as from previous experience, he had realized that causing physical pain to someone caused them to give inaccurate information due to the pain clouding their perception. However, the Gilgameshans, during periods where Wright was outside of the safe house or he approved of the use of force, tortured the ONI agent in earnest in revenge for what she had done. While Wright's method took some time, after two weeks, Agata broke and confessed who she was, the location of her operation, and the nature of her work. Contacting the Free State's high command, Wright was given permission to neutralize the ONI agent, an order which was immediately carried out. In order to dispose of the cadaver, the rebels hired out some local thugs, who quickly removed the evidence 24 hours later, the safehouse was raided and its contents captured by commandos of the Gilgameshan Special Air Service, accompanied by EOD personnel and experts on virology and biological weapons from the Gilgamesh Free Army and New Belgrade Medical Institute. Once the explosives set on the safehouse had been disarmed by EOD and several GLI commandos in protective gear had swept the scene and been decontaminated, medical teams moved in, and were amazed to find that all of the agent's work was still intact, owing to the complete surprise the GFS's agents had achieved in their apprehension. While some in the GFS high command wanted to utilize the virus against strategic targets such as Earth or , Marshal Edward Garan ordered that defensive research on the virus and its possible forms proceed with all haste, but that any offensive use of it was forbidden, fearing retaliation if it was used. When the UNSC-GFS War broke out in , research on the virus was still in progress at the Mulkey Ander Research Institute in Peachbrook. Fearing the virus would be recaptured by the UNSC or that containment would fail and it would spread to UNSC troops and across the planet, the scientists at the Institute destroyed the samples of the virus. However, they were unable to fully destroy their research before raided the facility and captured what remained. This research was relayed to back to ONI, who continued Agata's work, improving on the disease, and ensuring that the new virus was immune to the workarounds the GFS's scientists had developed. Category:Safe Havens